Jade Halvern's Arc

Chapter 3 of 5

The secret held, but the tournament did not wait. Registration closed at dusk. Jade stood outside the clerk's hall and watched foreigners turn their papers over at the table. She had no papers. She had no family seal. A single question about her birthplace would unmask her. So she went looking for ink instead of truth. The forger worked behind a false wall, in a workshop of humming pipes and strange forged plates. Xilith Vorane did not look up when Jade entered. The calligrapher was small, hairless, with huge black eyes and a scarred violet skull. One thin hand kept cutting a reed to a point. "Shut the door," Xilith said. "Light ruins the drying." "I need papers," Jade said. "Noble papers. Good enough for the tournament clerks." Xilith finally looked at her. Those black eyes moved over her glowing gown, her silver hair, her sleeves. "You wear foreign silk and ask me to make you local." The calligrapher almost smiled. "Expensive." Jade unclasped the gem pendant from her throat. It threw colored light across the forged plates. "Then take this." Xilith held the stone to the lamp, turned it, set it down. "This buys the ink. It does not buy the seal." One long finger tapped the table. "A noble house needs a crest. I copy crests. I do not invent them. Give me a real seal and I will make you its daughter." Jade had no real seal. She had the ring. She slid it from her finger, an heirloom ring carved with markings no clerk here could read. "Copy this." Xilith studied the ring for a long moment. "These marks mean nothing in this city. That makes them perfect. No clerk can prove they are false." The calligrapher pressed the ring into soft wax, then bent to the reed and began to write. The hand never shook. An hour later Jade held a sheet of noble papers. The crest at the top matched her ring exactly. Her false name sat below it in clean black strokes. She reached the clerk's hall before dusk. She laid the papers on the table and set the ring beside them. The clerk compared the crest to the wax. His eyes narrowed at the strange marks. Jade's pulse climbed. She smiled and did not speak. "House of the northern marches," the clerk muttered, reading her false name. "Far enough that no one's heard of you." He stamped the page. "Registered. First bout at dawn." Jade walked out with her name on the tournament rolls. She had won her place. But the ring was spent now. Its mark lived on paper for every official to see. And Xilith Vorane held the wax copy of an heirloom Jade could never let a soul examine. She had bought her entry with the one thing that could still expose her. Dawn would bring a blade. The paper trail behind her was another matter.